SATURDAY 30TH - BEAR HUNTING

Sorry no time for a blog tonight. We have to be up at 4:30 in the morning but I can show you one distant blurry photo of a bear. More to come when I get time.

FRIDAY 29th – ARRIVED AT LIKELY

Good news. We have wi fi. Not much to report today. It was a leisurely driving day spent mostly in the rain but we are optimistic about the morning. This is our camp site at Pyna-tee-ah Lodge, not quite up to our usual standard but quite satisfactory. A great advantage from Trish's perspective is that she doesn't have to prepare any meals. We eat with our hosts and the other two guests in their home.

The significance of rain is that, if it is raining, the sense of smell which bears use to detect food doesn’t work as well as it normally would and they tend to retreat into the forest and be hard to find.

We need fine weather for the bear hunt tomorrow which starts with breakfast at 5am in the morning!

THURSDAY 28TH – EN ROUTE TO LIKELY

Quiet day today. We spent a couple of hours on the road this morning but stopped at lunch time at perhaps the best camp site we have yet experienced. We are at the North Thompson River campground on the bank of the North Thompson River just downstream of where the Clearwater River joins it. The water coming out of Clearwater River is, you guessed it, crystal clear, while the water coming down the North Thompson is muddy. They say that it’s not actually mud, it’s rock flour from eroding rock which discolours the water. The photo below shows the view from our camp site.

For those who want to work out where we are, we are 5 klms south of the town of Clearwater and tomorrow will be heading east to 100 Mile House and then north to Likely.

En route we passed Mt. Robson which, as the photo shows, has a spectacular summit.

As we were leaving our camp site at Jasper this morning, we discovered a herd of elk with a very well endowed male watching over them. Our second wild life encounter of any significance. Hopefully we will have some more exciting ones over the weekend.

Given that Likely appears to be in the middle of nowhere, it appears likely to me that it is unlikely that I will be able to up load the blog until Monday so if we disappear for a few days, it is likely that will be the reason.

WEDNESDAY 27TH – MADE IT TO JASPER

Well here we are again, tucked away in a delightful camp site in the forest. Believe it or not, we are one of 781 campers in the completely full Whistlers Campground at Jasper but the camp ground is so large and so well set out that, apart from a couple of nearby neighbours in their own bush settings, we could be here on our own.

Today was a day of water and rock. We checked out the remaining two attractions of note on the Icefields Parkway being the Sunwapta Falls and the Athabasca Falls before arriving in Jasper, a delightful town with some quite quaint features.

This isn’t really the fire station but it obviously once was and caught my attention.

After restocking the cellar and visiting the Laundromat to do the washing, we went to Maligne Canyon where the Maligne River flows through incredibly deep and narrow sandstone gorges that it has carved out of the landscape. The picture can’t really tell the story.

Well that’s it. We’ve done the Rockies and they exceeded our expectations at almost every turn. Tomorrow we head west to hopefully find some bears in the wild to photograph. That’s the aim of the exercise. Everywhere we go has bear warnings and apparently, three people were killed by bears last year and quite a number were injured so they seem to be in Canada what sharks or snakes are to us in Australia.

On a positive note in relation to animal sightings, we finally did see an animal in the wild this afternoon at Maligne Canyon. It was a mule deer trotting along the track.

TUESDAY 26TH – ICEFIELD PARKWAY

As anticipated, we spent today on the Icefield Parkway. In fact, we are still on it that we are camped in a delightful forest setting at Jason’s Creek about 60 klms south of Jasper.

The Icefield Parkway lived up to its reputation as one of the most scenic drives in the world in that the scenery was just stunning. In fact, I couldn’t choose the photo of the day so you are getting four. You choose. Most were taken at Bow Lake.

The highlight of the day was our adventure on Athabasca Glacier at the Columbia Icefield Centre. We got to ride on one of those oversized buses and walk on the glacier.

The photo below shows the scale of the glacier in that five of the monster buses are in the picture. The Columbia icefield from which the glacier flows is allegedly the largest icefield outside the Arctic or Antarctic Circles.

From the Columbia Icefield Centre, we also visited the Glacier Skywalk, a spectacular structure with a glass floor built out over the very deep valley 900 feet below with the obligatory glacier scenery to be admired.

Tomorrow we will check out the remaining scenic spots on the Parkway and Jasper and probably spend tomorrow night at Jasper.

We have booked ourselves a bear spotting eco tour at Pyna-tee-ah Eco Lodge from Friday to Monday. The Lodge is at a place called Likely near Williams Lake if you want to look that up. It appears to be in the middle of nowhere so should be fun. We will be heading for there on Thursday/Friday after Jasper.

MONDAY 25TH –MORAINE LAKE AND BANFF

Another spectacular day. Perhaps the highlight of our trip so far (although that’s a big call) is Moraine Lake. It is certainly one of the most picturesque scenes we have seen so far. The photo above is clearly the photo of the day. I have included the one below just to prove we were there.

From Moraine Lake we headed for Banff. On the way we stopped off at Johnston Canyon and did the walk up to Lower Falls.it was particularly impressive for a location which didn’t seem to get that great a mention in the tourist information. The history of those sorts of places is fascinating. The railway came and a railway induced tourism industry followed. That is a common theme around here.

We then checked out Banff. It was surprisingly unimpressive by comparison with Lake Louise. We went to the Banff Gondola but the queue was unacceptably long and, compared to Whistler, the height to which the gondola went was not all that high so we gave that a miss. 

We then went to the Banff Hot Springs. How depressing was that, sharing a not very large swimming pool with about 100 bodies, so we gave that a miss too.

To be fair, the scenery was spectacular. Banff is in a valley (as all towns here are) surrounded by awe inspiring mountains. We will have to come back in winter but we won’t be doing that in a motorhome.

Tomorrow we head up the Icefields Parkway and hope to be having a ride in the monster below. It’s only five days since we were riding the buses in Vancouver but that seems a world away. I hope everything is going well in the real world back home.

SUNDAY 24TH – LAKE LOUISE

Those of you who have been here will recognize the photos above and below. It is of course The Chateau Lake Louise and the view looking over the lake towards Plain of Six Glaciers.

We are now very comfortably camped in the Parcs Canada Campground at Lake Louise. While there are 189 sites here, they are brilliantly laid out in a forest setting so not even the immediate neighbours have any impact.

Today we completed the navigation of Rogers Pass. We saw a movie at the Information Centre which demonstrated how military artillery is used in winter to cause avalanches before conditions get dangerous. The amount of snow which accumulates on the mountains above the pass in winter ready to wreak destruction on the road and rail below is spectacular.

We also gained an understanding of the Spiral Tunnels, a means by which trains spiral around the mountains in tunnels to climb the Big Hill on Kicking Horse Pass as they head towards Lake Louise. The photo below shows the engines coming out of the tunnel in the middle while the train is still entering the tunnel at the top. What can’t be seen in the photo are the last carriages of the train which are hidden in the trees immediately in front. The train in the photo is descending the hill.

We plan to stay here for at least two nights while we explore the area between here and Banff. We will then head north along the Icefields Parkway to Jasper.

These little critters are everywhere. We’re not sure whether they are a squirrel or a chipmunk.

SATURDAY 23RD – ALMOST AT THE ROCKIES

The photo above is the photo of the day taken at Three Valley. Apart from the reflections on the lake, it is notable because the highway is at the bottom of the hill on the left and the railway is at the bottom of the hill on the right – a typical scene in this part of the world.

Tonight we are tucked away in the forest at Loop Brook Campground deep in the Glacier National Park. We are so deep in fact that we have no phone signal so tonight’s blog won’t get uploaded until tomorrow. The fact that you are reading this means that it did get eventually get posted. The campground is so named because, in 1880, a loop in the railway was constructed which was supported on stone towers, all but one of which still stand today. The railway is still nearby but now follows a different route.

After stocking up at the Piccadilly Mall at Salmon Arm this morning, we headed east to Revelstoke where we were able to drive to the top of Mt. Revelstoke on what they call Meadows in the Sky Parkway. The photo is of the towering mountains much higher than the 6000 feet altitude to which we were able to drive.

 We then checked out the Revelstoke Dam and the associated hydro electric power station. The dam is constructed on the Columbia River and the lake held back by the dam stretches 139 klms up the river valley. Canada has a very ecologically sustainable hydro electric power generation system but still has to rely on the US to provide 15% of its power needs. We have not seen a single solar panel since we arrived but I guess they don’t get a sufficient number of sunny days per year to justify them.

We are now heading into the country where they have a requirement for group of four hiking as a bear precautionary measure. Trish and I are therefore a little nervous about heading off on the attractive trails on our own but we are keen to see a bear in the wild. We will need to find some hiking buddies.

Tonight we celebrate having been here for a week. One down, five to go. Hopefully they can all be as interesting and enjoyable as this week has been.

A mystery photo. Can you work out what it is?

FRIDAY 22ND – HEADING EAST

Today was spent on the road travelling from Whistler to the Sandy Point Beach Campground, near Salmon Arm (if anybody wants to look at a map and work out where that is). The scenery was extraordinary. We spent most of the day sharing narrow valleys with rivers and the Rocky Mountaineer railway line while the mountains towered on both side of us.

The photo above is taken at Duffey Lake Park. The one below is taken at Seton near Lillooet. What is particularly significant in the photo below is the railway line on the edge of the lake on the right of the photo. It puts everything else into perspective. That’s the Rocky Mountaineer line we followed all day. It passes within 100 metres of our camp ground. We will be following it all the way to Banff.

The multi coloured lake is the lower Lake Joffre. There is a middle Lake Joffre and an upper Lake Joffre accessible by hikers who are prepared to camp out to get there. In the distance not quite visible in the photo is the melting snow which feeds the lake system.

The Sandy Point Beach campground is very different to the manicured setting we had in Whistler. As the name implies, it fronts a long sandy beach on both sides of a point jutting out into Anstey Arm Lake, a very large lake which we are at one end of. It is an extremely popular skiing and wakeboarding venue, not unlike Lake Moogerah in that part visible from the camp ground beach. Our site is perfectly comfortable and only 50 metres from the beach but the general environment is very different to Whistler.

Tomorrow, we go through the Monashee Mountains before getting to the Columbia Mountains after which we will get to the Rocky Mountains themselves. Where we are now and west from here is referred to as the Kootenay Rockies in the tourism brochures. I don’t see how the country ahead of us could be any more spectacular than that encountered so far but we will see.

I hope those trains passing by don't disturb us too much during the night.

THURSDAY 21ST – EXPLORING WHISTLER

Today was spent exploring the mountainous terrain above Whistler. The highlight (excuse the pun) was the trip up to Mount Whistler – 6000 feet by gondola and another 1000 feet by chairlift.

The picture above is looking further up into the mountain ranges from Mount Whistler.

The top of Mount Whistler itself is quite desolate as this photo shows. It’s not a very good photo but if you look carefully, you can see the chairlift base station in the bottom right hand corner and just make out the chairlift poles heading up towards the highest point. Just over the ridge is where the photo below was taken.

From the top of the Mt Whistler gondola, we took the 4.4 km trip on the Peak2Peak Gondola which connects Mt. Whistler and Blackcomb. It’s a stunning ride. At the middle point, the gondola is 1300 feet above the valley floor. Trish wasn’t a bit nervous.

Needless to say, you get spectacular views of Whistler.

Whistler itself is a very smart village. It reminds me of a much larger version of Thredbo. There is a certain theme to the shops here.

Tomorrow we head further east. I don’t know where we will end up but there is some pretty interesting country ahead. 

As I am typing this, there is a storm brewing. It's very overcast and we can hear the occasional rumble of thunder but the Canadian Naked Grape Unoaked merlot is open and we are very comfortable with nowhere to go.